Softening house market?

That dream is nice of course, but it's very simplistic to think Bertie or any other Irish politician single-handedly fvcked it all up. It's the fundamental nature of free market economics and it's mirrored in every single country in the free world, and Ireland is not particularly an outlier.

This isn't because all politicians everywhere in the world are corrupt, it's because there are no magic easy solutions to keeping the ratio of supply and demand consistent in a world where the jobs market changes, standards change, cost of living changes, populations change, the amount of land available in desirable locations is finite, which locations are actually desirable can change, and construction takes a significant amount of time and labour of which there is a limited supply.

Well unfortunately for both Irish and foreign workers the construction slowdown is global its not just Ireland having this issue so they are going to have to cut their margins thinner and the cost of building materials are falling so there may be affordablity back for extensions in the new year, the only building material that is still stubbornly high is cement and that has already seen signs of it peaking.

The only issue is construction workers then join the dole queue so what are they to do?

since many of the large corporations based here seemed to be doing well, its creating the illusion, we re all doing fine, but take a look at tech stocks!

Join the dole que.

Lads that travel for work do it for one three reasons, money, money, money. These tend to be the most flexible of workers. They are very fast to redirect there pricing to elsewhere.

They will usually discommode less flexible workers. Remember you do not need all.ofvthem to change there work target area just 15-20%.

There is a lot of refurbish/extension sitting out there waiting to start in rural and smaller urban area's which will become more attractive than spinning in and out of Dublin costing you 3-400 euro a week.

Or technology and manufacturing is the best driver for economic growth.

All western countries are trying to pull manufacturing away from Asia since it provides so much for their economies.

If people actually think manufacturing in its current form is coming back to the west, you should watch a documentary called American Factor on Netflix. People in the west aren't going to stand in an assembly line putting your next iPhone or Samsung phone together. They will just end up moving stuff to other asian countries, then eventually move them to South American and African countries. What manufacturing we do get in the West, will be highly automated and will not require a lot of people.

Not quite automate but you can get houses that are built in a factory and put together on site - which I'd imagine requires less people than doing everything on site.

Manufacturing in its current form isn't line assembly anymore, even in Asian countries. Anything that could be automated easily is already automated. But automation works for a high skill, high pay economy like Ireland. I've worked in manufacturing for years and people realised maybe 10 years ago that the future is homegrown automated manufacturing. All this Industry 4.0 stuff that's come out in the past few decades has made its way into modern factories.

It will be interesting to see how new iphone sales go over the xmas and what price point.

Ever seen how plumbers work in an estate? They use the first house to figure out what bends need to go into a section of pipe, then they'll put the bends into an entire 12' or 16' length. No cuts and flanges. It's nearly as automated as you can get!

Ireland has a huge excess of saving over borrowing. With inflation at 8+% and 0.1% I test rates it encourage spending and investment.

The problem for labor costs in Dublin is the travel costs and time involved.

A build said to me once the labour costs on the average house is about an hour/ft. The Dublin based trades person subbing into sites can afford to take a cut of 15-20/hour off present rates ( assuming large job rates are 40-60/ hour) and work away.

However the worker traveling from outside Dublin cannot as travel costs + time lost are probably equivalent to 25/ hour, take 20/hour cut in labour costs and he is looking at working for 10-15/ hour.

Work nearer him is much more attractive at 20-40/ hour. This bring the small job extensions and refurbishment into play outside Dublin.

However it leaves Dublin with a serious labour shortage and one of two things happen labour costs do not drop of number of workers drop.

Your making an assumption that builders are mainly based outside of Dublin, I would hazard a guess that there are more builders based in the capital as apposed to the rest of the country. I could be wrong but have you anything to back up your theory here

Just looking at asking price changes on myhome. I know it's just asking prices and some (if not all) were probably a bit high in the first place...but nearly all are price drops of 5 to 10% ish.

You dont understand the mentality because you're not understanding the situation.

Of course its better to buy at a lower price. The problem is Person A does not know if the price will be lower or higher a year or 2 later. So the general advice is to not attempt to play the market and wait for a crash and its better to buy when you can afford it and not dump cash into rent.

Hardly 20 Euro/hr Bass. That's accepting 800 Euro a week less to have less of a commute for a person doing an average 40 hour week.

Or to look at it another way, 5 lads could club together to get a house in Dublin for during the week and pay for it out of the extra 20k/month they'd be earning between them compared to working locally where they are from.

I cant see any builder getting the hourly rates your talking about both of you. The recession has not kicked in yet wait till the new year you will have builders crawling over each other for work.

I am shocked that some of these articles pass for journalism. He references simply that some expect price rises and doesn't bother to say sources. He qoutes one source for the downside. I've no idea if prices will go up or down but there is nothing new in that article and nothing that points to prices will definitely continue to rise. There is supply issues in all countries. The markets where house prices fell have seen huge rate rises. To date amongst the main Irish mortgage providers there has been little movement in rates. If they do move and prices do not fall it will be an outlier to most other markets.

That article's two to three months behind the curve as regards asking prices at least. It's been about an average 3:1 steady decline in asking prices versus increases in the last two plus months.

One minute this guy is writing a review on the Google Pixel, next hes analyzing the housing market.

Ignore these people or expect the opposite of their predictions. And no...I didnt read the article, the heading tells me everything I need to know.

The hourly rates I quoted are for trades that are subcontracted in. These guys are all self employed. Most self employed electricians are subbing at 70/ hour for small mid sized jobs.

Builders stopped paying most of these by the hour years ago. Productivity was away too low. 12 years ago I talked to QA about it. A unionised blockies was laying about 200 blocks per day a subcontracted lad would do over double that. When I did my house direct build back in the early nineties a fifty year old blocklayer laid 400 blocks per day.

There is no sorting safe pass, no holiday entitlement or pension entitlement nor manual handling courses, the subbie sorts all them themselves. They provide there own safety gear, tools etc. The builder actually only provides the materials.

The 20/ hour is made up of two parts first is fuel. These guys mainly drive midsized or large vans. Fuel economy is usually around 25-30 mpg because there is often a trailer or material inside the van. A lad traveling 60 miles to and from a job is putting up 720/ week for a six day week. That's is 24 gallons or 108 liters. That is 200+/ week on fuel alone. Add in maintenance and van replacement 100-150/ week. Then you have the time factors, travelling that distance is taking 3 hours per day I'd not a bit with it. Different between that and local work is 20/ hour minimum.

Electricians are top of the rate pay wise. They have to have to have expensive test gear, there public liability is more( the general site liability will not cover them completely which for the wet trades and carpentry is grand). Test gear alone can be 5-6k depending on work taken on.

Plumbers are the next most expensive. The bricklayer, plasterers and Carpenters all work on output.

Even a Tiler or a painter are now around 200/day maybe even a tad above in some cases locally and they were always the most reasonable by far.

The reason most do not rent in Dublin is various. Electricians or plumbers because of security for there vans. A electrician near the city backs the van up against an L shaped wall that blocks access to both his side and rear doors. He has an alarm on the van and one of there steering wheel locks. He has a ground steel security poke in front as well.

Most of these lads are now in there forties they are gone from roughing it in rented accommodation. You have to factor in meal costs as well. Very few are interested in coming back to rented accommodation and preparing a dinner, sorting out meals for breaks the following day. At home the better half will have cooked meat, and cheese in the fridge, some will go to the deli counter for morning break and lunch. All of them want a dinner in the evening. Some of these lads could be burning 4-500 calories an hour.

The new year is less than 8 weeks away.. What's gonna happen in that time frame?

Things may slow down but there simply isn't enough tradesmen in this country, why would they just have no work overnight?

Wasn't the point of my post Bass. I wasn't even bothering to argue any of your figures. I think your figures are a bit off, but that is irrelevant to the point.

Which is that - if your argument is accurate - that person could decide to cut out all that expense and live in Dublin. Or to put that into reverse, and using your figures, a person working in construction down the country could be earning 800 Euro per week more if they rented a house in Dublin so that they didn't have all those bills you calculate.

Most of them are settled and living where they are. In Cavan, Louth, Meath, Carlow or Offaly they have a fairly decent house, the spouse could be working locally just like many others that commute in and out of Dublin.

Ya this discussion came up in another property thread 6+ months back. Its was another posters that said subcontracting trades people working in Dublin needed 1k/week to travel in and out.

If you stayed up there you would end up travelling up and down a day a week anyway. Nothing more boring than staying in a rented house, invariably you end up going for a few drinks 2-3 night a week, to watch a soccer match or to meet some other lad...or go chasing tail. Half the lads that do that end up separated.

If you are a sparky or a plumber, there is no way you will stay in rented accomdation. Some lads will stay in BnB or digs type accomdation for a day or two a week. But the reality is if you can earn X/week near home you will want X+Y to work in Dublin.

But Invariably they do not. They might get 4-6 weeks( some lads will do better) per year.youvwill seldom get 500/ day cash for a week or a few weeks work.

If you get all cash at the end of the day you need to lodge some of it.

I used to go to a doctor he used to charge me 40/visit, another lad used pay him by card and it was costing him 50/ visit. He changed to paying cash